Monday, March 13, 2006

Sadaam Will Be Hanged

The trial of ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and seven former aides resumed before the Iraqi High Tribunal on Sunday. Speaking on Iraqia state-television just before the trial resumed, the court’s chief prosecutor, Jaafar Mussawi, said Saddam would hang immediately without undergoing further trials if found guilty and sentenced to death in the present case. Saddam is on trial for crimes against humanity in connection with the killing of 148 villagers from Dujail,north of Baghdad, after he escaped an assassination attempt there in 1982. “If the court passes a death sentence on any of the defendants in the Dujail case, the law is clear, the sentence must be carried out within 30 days following the appeal,” Mussawi said. As for other cases (in which they have been charged), the court will only judge live defendants as those executed cannot be tried, he added. Saddam and others have also been charged in connection with other crimes, including the use of poison gas during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq against Iraqi Kurds in Halabja, in the north of the country, and the crushing of a Shia revolt in the south of the country following the 1991 Gulf war. Saddam’s trial, which opened in October, moved Sunday into its 15th hearing with defendants expected to start testifying as to their role in the killing of 148 villagers from thevillage of Dujail. At a later stage, the court was due to adjourn for the panel of five judges to consider specific charges against each of the defendants.

This should have been done about a week after they found Sadaam. I first thought he would be given lethal injection, then I realized that it would be the Iraqis dealing the justice, so there would be no "cruel and unusual punishment" speech.